Gasherbrum IV is one of the most beautiful and hardest mountains on earth. Just 75 meters keep the peak from being the world’s 15th 8,000’er.
Commercial climbers have thus been spared from having to deal with a peak that is well out of their league. There is no easy route up its walls. Instead, the record seekers that populate base camp these days focus solely on Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II, the two 8,000’ers.
Within three weeks, they will all be gone. Then alpinists Sergey Nilov and Dimitry Golovchenko will be alone to tackle a new route on Gasherbrum IV.
The many Gasherbrums lie in a semi-circle around a series of glaciers. Photo: Wikipedia
A totally new line
The two Russians are well known among ExplorersWeb readers for their incredible effort on the SE Face of Jannu (speaking of difficult peaks!) and their epic descent. They told Mountain.ru that they will begin on July 28, which is rather late in the Karakoram climbing season. They also confirmed they want to climb a new line that no one has done or even attempted before. With the story, mountain.ru included a picture of the unclimbed South and East Faces of GIV. Hopefully, the climbers themselves will share details soon.
The labeled photo from mountain.ru shows the South Face of Gasherbrum IV. To the right lies the East Face. The ridge on the far right of the photo is the one climbed by Bonatti and Mauri in 1958. It leads to the north summit and then traverses to the peak’s main summit (all marked in Russian). The front side of the mountain shows the SW Spur, the South Face, and in black, the South Spur.
In the footsteps of legends
Walter Bonatti and Carlo Mauri made the first ascent of Gasherbrum IV in 1958, on an expedition led by Ricardo Cassin. They climbed the NE Ridge to the north summit, then managed the crux of the climb: the traverse to the main summit.
The snowy West Face of Gasherbrum IV rises above the Gasherbrum Base Camp. Photo: Baltistan Adventures
Yet the most distinctive aspect of Gasherbrum IV is its massive West Face, better known as The Shining Wall, because it reflects the dawn sun. Voytek Kurtyka and Robert Schauer did the first ascent of this face in 1985, in one of the epic climbs of the last century. They pushed their own limits, alpine style. Although they survived, they didn’t reach the main summit.
Twelve years later, a siege-style South Korean team ascended the Shining Wall to the main summit via a different route, thus gaining credit for the first full ascent.
Nilov and Golovchenko won a Piolet d’Or in 2016 for their new route on the north spur of 6,904m Thalay Sagar. Their Jannu climb led to an excellent film called The Wall of Shadows. See the trailer here.
Thanks to @KrisAnnapurna for the heads-up!
